<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Swim Good by sufferinsappho</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27115516">Swim Good</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sufferinsappho/pseuds/sufferinsappho'>sufferinsappho</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:29:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>815</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27115516</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sufferinsappho/pseuds/sufferinsappho</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"And I got this black suit on, I’ve been roaming around like I’m looking for a funeral, no, no.  One more mile til the road runs out. Imma bout to drive in the ocean.  Imma try to swim from something bigger than me. "</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dani Clayton/Jamie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Swim Good</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Frank Ocean's "Swim Good" as covered by Dermot Kennedy.  As are the lyrics scattered throughout.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The gardener returned to Bly Manor one last time. She did not trouble herself with the house, where she had found so much pain, or the gardens with which with she had spent so much care. She turned, and walked resolutely to the lake. On its shore, she took a deep breath, then another.</p><p>The emptiness clawing its way inside of her chest made her think of the way the au pair must have been feeling.</p><p>The gardener swam into the lake and dove beneath it. Crying out to the lady of the lake with her whole heart, she repeated the words she had heard her wife say so many years before. Long before she understood the implications of the words, or the depths of her own feelings.</p><p>“You. Me. Us.”</p><p>
  <em>“if I feel like a ghost no Shwayze, ever since I lost my baby”</em>
</p><p>But the lady in the lake was different now. The lady in the lake was Dani. And Dani would never. And perhaps, that is where some stories would end. The gardener would spend her life searching for her own lady of the lake. Gazing at her reflection, filling pools of water and leaving the door open just a crack in case her lover returned. Hoping, endlessly, for her lover to come back to her.</p><p>
  <em>“And I got this black suit on, I’ve been roaming around like I’m looking for a funeral, no, no. One more mile til the road runs out. Imma bout to drive in the ocean. Imma try to swim from something bigger than me. Kick off these shoes. And swim good. Swim good. Take off this suit, and swim good, swim good, no don’t try stopping me. Don’t try saving me…”</em>
</p><p>But not in this one.</p><p>The gardener kicked herself to the top of the lake, and gulped air, and swam back down. This time, she did not call out for the lady of the lake. She called out for Dani.</p><p>“Restart the clock Poppins! We got thirteen before, let me give us thirteen more!”</p><p>And the lady of the lake opened her eyes, and reached out her hands, and allowed herself to be pulled to the surface. For Dani had spent thirteen years learning how precious and fragile each day is when you cannot be sure there would be another, and who was she to deny her gardener whatever days they could have?</p><p>____________________________</p><p>“So they got another thirteen years then?” The storyteller shifted her eyes away from the distant place they had been focused, and looked at the wedding guest across the circle. The woman continued, “or would I see her, the gardener, if I went to Bly Manor?” The storyteller felt a hand land on her shoulder, gentle as a whisper, and she looked up briefly to catch her wife’s gentle eyes. Turning back to the woman, and trailing her hand to cover the one on her shoulder, she replied.</p><p>“Of course not. I think you would find no place on any map called Bly Manor. And besides, the lady in the lake was Dani. And Dani would never.”</p><p>--------------------------</p><p>“You left out the most important part you know.” Time had softened Dani’s brash Jersey accent into something more muted, but Jamie loved it all the same. She grinned helplessly, curling closer to her wife on the dance floor and resting her head on Dani’s shoulder for a moment.</p><p>“I thought you said that I told the story as if I was channeling the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I took so long?” Jamie snarked, feeling a kiss press itself like magic into her hair, prompting her to lift her head.</p><p>Dani’s beautiful face, lined with hair that had gone less evenly silver than her own smirked down at her. The deep smile lines that had taken up residence around her mouth called for a kiss, so Jamie pressed a quick peck there, ignoring her wife’s playful grimace at the reminder of her age. They were both too aware of how near they came to never seeing each other age to be seriously upset. Dani murmured,</p><p>“You forgot to tell them that when you plant a moonflower in the same spot as an old one, it can use the vines the first one put out to help pull itself up.”</p><p>Across the room, for just a moment, the mirror did not show her reflection, but the reflection of her wife, as young as she looked on the day they married, if not in law, then in their hearts.</p><p>Jamie swore she was smiling back, even if the lake was waiting. Jamie smiled at her lady in the lake in the mirror across the room. At her Dani, warm and alive in her arms.</p><p>
  <em>“One more mile til the road runs out”</em>
</p><p>Nuzzling close again, she murmured, “I’ll add that in for you Poppins. Next time.”</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>